The United States has officially shut down the National Law Enforcement Accountability Database (NLEAD), a federal system designed to track police misconduct. The decision was met with paramount criticism from policing reform advocates as the Trump administration eliminates a tool meant to prevent officers with histories of misconduct from moving undetected between agencies.  

The database, first reported as decommissioned by The Washington Post, is no longer accessible to law enforcement agencies, as promised by US President Donald Trump during his campaign. The US Department of Justice confirmed its elimination in an online statement. “User agencies can no longer query or add data to the NLEAD,” the statement read. “The US Department of Justice is decommissioning the NLEAD in accordance with federal standards.”  

NLEAD was originally established through an executive order issued by President Joe Biden in 2023, three years into his presidency. The database, though not publicly available, allowed law enforcement agencies to check whether an officer applying for a position had a record of misconduct, including excessive force.  

However, Trump rescinded Biden’s executive order as part of his broader efforts to scale back federal oversight of law enforcement. Ironically, Trump had initially proposed such a database himself in 2020, following the police killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis—months before he lost the presidential election to Biden.  

The White House defended Trump’s decision in a statement to The Washington Post. “President Trump believes in an appropriate balance of accountability without compromising law enforcement’s ability to do its job of fighting crime and keeping communities safe,” the statement read. It further criticized Biden’s executive order as “full of woke, anti-police concepts” and stated that Trump rescinded it on his first day in office to ensure law enforcement had the tools to combat crime.  

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The dismantling of NLEAD comes amid ongoing concerns about police misconduct in the US. In Hanceville, Alabama, an entire police department was recently placed on leave following a grand jury investigation that uncovered a “rampant culture of corruption,” prompting them to call for its closure. 

In its findings, the grand jury determined that the department had “failed to account for, preserve, and maintain evidence” and, in doing so, had “failed crime victims and the public at large.”  

Vow to shield police from accountability

Back in August, Trump vowed to protect police officers from legal accountability if he is re-elected, stressing that the US is experiencing a violent crime wave driven by the Black Lives Matter movement and illegal border crossings.

Official statistics reportedly reveal that violent crime in the US is at nearly a 50-year low. Despite this, Trump promised a "crackdown on local Marxist district attorneys who refuse to uphold the law" while criticizing the way police officers' lives are being disrupted for "simply doing their jobs."

“Over the past four years, the Marxist left has waged a vicious war on law enforcement in our country. They’ve taken away the dignity and the spirit and the life of some of these police officers, and that’s why you see it – the crime is so out of control in our country,” he stated.

Trump went on to say that the police “have a lot of difficulty with the laws of our land."

“We’re going to get rid of that difficulty because they shouldn’t have difficulty, our police,” he said.